Almost half of Pew survey respondents are OK with sharing their location with apps, but were wary about that information going to the government.
Photograph: Ruckiah Hussain/flickr/Getty

A Pew study released on Tuesday found Americans still don’t trust the government but they do like the data it produces, even when they don’t know they are using it.

Just 23% of Americans said they “trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of time”, a figure that has risen from 17% in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, but not nearly as high as the recent peak of 44% at the end of the Reagan presidency.

Overall, the study found “relatively high levels of broad and simple engagement with government data as people use the internet to access government services and information”, but only 11% were satisfied that the agencies providing the information were doing it well.

Faith in government split along party lines – 31% of Democrats said they trusted the government, compared with 15% of Republicans (the survey did not share data of the 11% of respondents who identified as other than either party).

But there was a high degree of comfort around the government’s ability to publicly share information online – 82% said they wanted to see restaurants publicly evaluated, and 60% said they wanted to see individual teachers graded on their performance, as well.

And when it came to using information federal and local governments provide publicly, especially through proxies, Americans had nearly all used the data in one way or another – 84% had used weather apps, 81% had used map apps, and 66% had used a map to gather information about a nearby store, bar or restaurant, all of which use information posted on the web by government authorities.

Frequently, people didn’t realize they were using government data, and nearly half of respondents were OK with apps that shared their location so long as they were provided with better services in exchange. The number dipped sharply when the question explicitly described the information as going to the government.

When it came down to sign on to one extreme or the other – in Pew’s terms, the “ardent optimist” or the “dormant doubter” – the numbers were revealing. In the survey, 17% of people used government information and were enthusiastic about the good it could do; more than twice that number – 36% – did not often use the web “to transact or find out about government” and also thought greater transparency was unlikely to make the government “more accountable”.